More Women Should Be Campaign Managers

Women, we're looking at you.

In this op-ed, former campaign manager Erica Sagrans explains why we need more women to run political campaigns, especially if running for office isn't in the cards for them.

My first week as the campaign manager for a state representative election in Chicago, I was mistaken for the candidate's girlfriend and his secretary.

Both instances were infuriating, and — shocker — not the only times I experienced sexism during campaigns I’ve worked on. But months later, we went on to win the election, and my candidate is now my state representative — an awesome, young, progressive guy named Will Guzzardi, who led the successful effort to end the Illinois tampon tax, and has been fighting for free college and a $15 minimum wage.

Since Trump's election, we’ve heard a lot about how women should run for for office, and I am so in for this. Amanda Litman, who I worked with on the Obama campaign, even released a book about how to do it. Yet despite all the encouragement and direction that's now available, I don’t see myself running for office anytime soon, and I’m probably not the only one who feels that way. I want to suggest another idea for those of you who want to take a bigger step into politics than you may have done before: Be a campaign manager.

Though I had worked in politics for years — in online communications for Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill, at the Democratic National Convention, and on the Obama 2012 campaign — taking a job as a campaign manager wasn’t quite a planned career move. At the launch party for Will Guzzardi's campaign, I talked to my friend Dan, who had done polling for Will’s first campaign. Thinking I was in no way qualified for the role, I mentioned that I wanted to be more involved with Will’s campaign this time than I had been when he first ran in 2012. Did he have a campaign manager? Dan lit up. “You need to do this,” he said. “You’re way more qualified than you think.”

Will called me the next day, and soon I quit my job at a progressive organization, taking on a tiny salary and giving up the benefits of a stable job. But seven months later we won the election by 20 points. It was hard, it was stressful, but it was one of the best jobs I've ever had, and four years later, Will is still my state representative.
Being a campaign manager is tough. Jumping from campaign to campaign isn’t easy. But here’s why you should do it anyway if running for office yourself isn’t in the cards right now:

Women (especially women of color) are the backbone of every Democratic campaign — and should be setting the strategy, too. On every campaign I’ve seen, women are the ones who make it run. We are the phone callers and the door-knockers, the coffee-hosters and the friend-bringers. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake called older African-American women “the strongest part of our base.” Yet women and people of color are rarely setting the strategy and running things at the top, and we need to change that.

Women are more likely to get into politics because they want to get things done, rather than seeking status. In a study by Rutgers political scientist Kelly Ditmar, female legislators decided to run because of “the ability to effect change in society. The number one reason for men? They always wanted to be a politician.” We need more people in office who are there because they want to make things better and represent their communities, not because they always saw themselves in an “important” job when they grew up.

Working on campaigns can be a solid career move for women (sometimes more so than being the candidate). This shouldn’t stop anyone from running, but being a candidate can be a wreck for your finances, because while it’s a full-time job, you can’t pay yourself out of the money you raise for your campaign. As a manager, you earn a salary — not always a great one — but if you like the work and stick with campaigns, you can earn more each time, and work on bigger and more high-profile races. You have to be on top of things if you’re moving from city to city for work all the time, but being a manager, or at some point a campaign consultant, can be a real career if you want to make one out of it. Plus, campaigns are pretty much forced into salary transparency, since they have to report their expenses publicly, making it easy to see who’s earning what and know what you should be asking for.

You’re more qualified than you think. There are too many prerequisites for anyone to actually be “qualified” to manage a campaign, unless they’ve done it before (polling, opposition research, field, mail, messaging, data, digital, fundraising, petitioning to get on the ballot…it’s a lot!). But if you can learn fast and adapt, you’re probably qualified. If you’ve volunteered or worked for a campaign before and paid attention to how all the pieces fit together, you’re qualified. If you’ve organized events, raised money for charity, managed staff or volunteers, you’ve got skills that will translate. Think about it: If you asked a room of people who thought they were “qualified” for a job that it was impossible to have all of the qualifications for, who do you think would raise their hands right away? We have to create pathways for women and people of color, who frequently start on campaigns as volunteers or field organizers, to move up and become leaders.

You get to create your own work environment. If it wasn’t apparent already, the outpouring of #MeToo stories have made it all the more obvious that for women, the workplace is often a toxic environment. From sexual harassment and abuse to microaggressions and pay disparities, every workplace comes with its own level of challenges and frustrations. Campaigns do too, but where else can you walk into an organization and be in charge from day one, aside from being a campaign manager? I had a great, collaborative relationship with my candidate, which isn’t always the case — but because of it, I was able to create the kind of work culture I had always wanted, but never had. I expected our staff to work hard and meet high standards, but also for everyone to be kind and support each other. We were a team: We worked a lot, we joked and had fun with each other, and we got things done. I liked managing and mentoring my younger female staffers, and tried to have their backs when they dealt with sexism. And I was surrounded by a squad of women friends and colleagues who had my back, including Will’s badass first campaign manager who laid the groundwork for our campaign and was always there with advice when we needed it.

As Michelle Goldberg wrote in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, “if there must be bosses, fewer of them should be men.” On political campaigns — and in all sorts of fields right now — I hear there are some job openings.